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Rating: 
Summary: An insightful work that explains the electric chair enigma.
Review: The historical development and use of the electric chair is a subject represented by only a handful of academic (or at least accurate) books. If you read only one, make it Blood and Volts. Metzger must be congratulated for not simply pandering to the morbidly curious. Sure, there's a lot of gory detail -- necessary in describing such a technological enigma as the electric chair -- but Metzger moves beyond this. He gives us an uncannilly lucid view of the society, the people, and the politics that spawned the electric chair. He shows us not only the self-congratulatory PR of the day, but also the soul-searching criticism leveled at the electric chair by scientists, doctors, and the popular press. We assume that capital punishment advocates all hailed this new "scientific" method of killing. Not so, as Metzger shows us. After learning of the actual results of its use, many seriously proposed a return to hanging as more humane. It takes much to explain a period of history in which most homes (and prisons) were lit by kerosene lamps, yet prisoners were executed by technology so exotic that experts had to be shipped in just to operate it (as the author points out, no one ever knew how much voltage or current actually killed the first victim of the chair, and the duration of shocks to be given had to be "guessed-at" by two physicians minutes before the execution). If you want to truly understand how the electric chair came about, and why it remains today, Blood and Volts is a good place to start.
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